Happy Birthday U.S. Marine Corps.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Today is the 244th birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps . If you're close to anyone who ever served in the Marines , you might know this already.
Yes, the other services -- the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard -- celebrate their birthdays each year (June 14, October 13, September 18, and August 4).
But no other U.S. military organization observes its birthday like the Marines .
1. "I do not believe I could have built FedEx without the skills I learned from the Marine Corps."
-- Frederick W. Smith, Marine veteran and founder of FedEx
2. "I can't say enough about the two Marine divisions. If I use words like brilliant, it would really be an under-description of the absolutely superb job they did..."
-- General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army
3. "We think of the Marine Corps as a military outfit, and of course it is, but for me, the U.S. Marine Corps was a four-year crash course in character education. It taught me how to make a bed, how to do laundry, how to wake up early, how to manage my finances."
-- J. D. Vance, author of "Hillbilly Elegy"
4. "I'm not scared of very much. I've been hit by lightning and been in the Marine Corps for four years."
-- Lee Trevino, Hall of Fame golfer
5. "I loved being in the Marine Corps, I loved my job in the Marine Corps, and I loved the people I served with. It's one of the best things I've had a chance to do."
-- Adam Driver, actor
6. "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem."
― President Reagan
-- Rob Riggle, actor and comedian
8. "You cannot exaggerate about the Marines. They are convinced to the point of arrogance, that they are the most ferocious fighters on earth- and the amusing thing about it is that they are."
-- Father Kevin Keaney, chaplain who served with Marines in Korea
9. I've always been proud of being a Marine. I won't hesitate to defend the Corps.
-- Jonathan Winters, World War II Marine veteran, later actor and comedian
10. "The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle."
-- Gen. John Pershing, U.S. Army
11. "'Hardness,' I was learning, was the supreme virtue among recon Marines. The greatest compliment one could pay to another was to say he was hard. Hardness wasn't toughness, nor was it courage, although both were part of it. Hardness was the ability to face an overwhelming situation with aplomb, smile calmly at it, and then triumph through sheer professional pride."
― Nathaniel Fick, author
12. "The Marine Corps was the first father figure I had ever known."
-- Art Buchwald, Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper columnist
13. "We have a saying in the Marine Corps and that is 'no better friend, no worse enemy, than a U.S. Marine.' We always hope for the first, friendship, but are certainly more than ready for the second."
-- John F. Kelly, retired Marine general and former chief of staff to President Trump
15. "Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity."
-- William Manchester, author and World War II Marine
16. "I'm probably more comfortable inside a Marine Corps rifle company than I am anywhere in my life."
-- Jim Webb, former U.S. senator, Marine Corps Vietnam veteran
17. "A Marine is a Marine. I set that policy two weeks ago - there's no such thing as a former Marine."
-- General James F. Amos, (First aviator to serve as U.S.M.C. Commandant, 2008 to 2010)
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Semper Fi Marines - Happy Birthday.
Got any memories ya wanna share?
Thanks for this, i'll weigh in when I'm up and moving around.
This old retired FMF Corpsman wishes a Happy Birthday to all my brother and sister Marines past and present. Semper Fi!
I trained with em, ate with em, flew with em..... they're damn near a cult, but if I had a choice of having 40 squids with weapons or 2 Marines in the foxhole with the shit going down..... I choose the 2 Marines!
Happy Birthday to my brothers in green!
And we definitely respect and honor your air protection - at all times
My father although no longer in the USMC was a marine until the day that he died. RIP dad.
As was mine. He insisted that I was born a 'jarhead' because he was serving @ Port Chicago, CA at the time. An Admiral signed my birth certificate. Dad gave me his Marksman Medal when I turned 14. He was in the Reserves @ Great Lakes and when I got older my Uncle Chip, dad's youngest brother, was stationed there with the Navy and I got to see it up close too.
Being a Marine got my dad on the fast track for becoming a Chicago cop.
Semper Fi Dulay.
My son...RIP, Semper Fi.
I don't know how I missed this. My sincere condolences. You are enduring the hardest thing there is. Semper Fi, sweet lady in black. Semper Fi!
Semper Fi - L.I.B.
In honor, respect, and gratitude to all Marines ...
The Marine Corps is the only branch of the U.S. Armed Forces that recruits people specifically to Fight.
The Army emphasizes personal development (an Army of One), the Navy promises fun (let the journey begin), the Air Force offers security (it's a great way of life).
Missing from all the advertisements is the hard fact that a soldier's life is to suffer and perhaps to die for his people and take lives at the risk of his/her own.
Even the thematic music of the services reflects this evasion. The Army's Caisson Song describes a pleasant country outing. Over hill and dale, lacking only a picnic basket. Anchors Aweigh the Navy's celebration of the joys of sailing could have been penned by Jimmy Buffet.
The Air Force song is a lyric poem of blue skies and engine thrust. All is joyful, and invigorating, and safe. There are no land mines in the dales nor snipers behind the hills, no submarines or cruise missiles threaten the ocean jaunt, no bandits are lurking in the wild blue yonder.
The Marines' Hymn, by contrast, is all combat. "We fight our Country's battles", "First to fight for right and freedom", "We have fought in every clime and place where we could take a gun", "In many a strife we have fought for life and never lost our nerve".
The choice is made clear. You may join the Army to go to adventure training, or join the Navy to go to Bangkok , or join the Air Force to go to computer school. You join the Marine Corps to go to War! But the mere act of signing the enlistment contract confers no status in the Corps.
The Army recruit is told from his first minute in uniform that "you're in the Army now, soldier". The Navy and Air Force enlistees are sailors or airmen as soon as they get off the bus at the training center.
The new arrival at Marine Corps boot camp is called a recruit, or worse (a lot worse), but never a MARINE. Not yet, maybe never. He or she must earn the right to claim the title of UNITED STATES MARINE and failure returns you to civilian life without hesitation or ceremony.
History classes in boot camp? Stop a soldier on the street and ask him to name a battle of World War One. Pick a sailor at random and ask for a description of the epic fight of the Bon Homme Richard. Ask an airman who Major Thomas McGuire was and what is named after him. I am not carping and there is no sneer in this criticism. All of the services have glorious traditions, but no one teaches the young soldier, sailor or airman what his uniform means and why he should be proud of it.
But...ask a Marine about World War One and you will hear of the wheat field at Belleau Wood and the courage of the Fourth Marine Brigade comprised of the Fifth and Sixth Marines.. Faced with an enemy of superior numbers entrenched in tangled forest undergrowth the Marines received an order to attack that even the charitable cannot call ill-advised. It was insane. Artillery support was absent and air support hadn't been invented yet. Even so the Brigade charged German machine guns with only bayonets, grenades, and an indomitable fighting spirit. A bandy-legged little barrel of a Gunnery Sergeant, Daniel J. Daly, rallied his company with a shout, "Come on you sons a bitches, do you want to live forever?" He took out three machine guns himself.
French liaison-officers hardened though they were by four years of trench bound slaughter were shocked as the Marines charged across the open wheat field under a blazing sun directly into the teeth of enemy fire. Their action was so anachronistic on the twentieth-century field of battle that they might as well have been swinging cutlasses. But the enemy was only human. The Boche could not stand up to the onslaught.
So the Marines took Belleau Wood . The Germans, those that survived, thereafter referred to the Marines as "Tuefel Hunden" (Devil Dogs) and the French in tribute renamed the woods "Bois de la Brigade de Marine" (Woods of the Brigade of Marines).
Every Marine knows this story and dozens more. We are taught them in boot camp as a regular part of the curriculum. Every Marine will always be taught them! You can learn to don a gas mask anytime, even on the plane en route to the war zone, but before you can wear the Eagle, Globe and Anchor and claim the title United States Marine you must first know about the Marines who made that emblem and title meaningful. So long as you can march and shoot and revere the legacy of the Corps you can take your place in line. And that line is as unified in spirit as in purpose.
A soldier wears branch service insignia on his collar, metal shoulder pins and cloth sleeve patches to identify his unit, and far too many look like they belong in a band.
Sailors wear a rating badge that identifies what they do for the Navy.
Airmen have all kinds of badges and get medals for finishing schools and showing up for work.
Marines wear only the Eagle, Globe and Anchor together with personal ribbons and their CHERISHED marksmanship badges. They know why the uniforms are the colors they are and what each color means. There is nothing on a Marine's uniform to indicate what he or she does nor what unit the Marine belongs to. You cannot tell by looking at a Marine whether you are seeing a truck driver, a computer programmer or a machine gunner or a cook or a baker. The Marine is amorphous, even anonymous, by conscious design.
The Marine is a Marine. Every Marine is a rifleman first and foremost, a Marine first, last and Always! You may serve a four-year enlistment or even a twenty plus year career without seeing action, but if the word is given you'll charge across that Wheatfield! Whether a Marine has been schooled in automated supply or automotive mechanics or aviation electronics or whatever is immaterial. Those things are secondary - the Corps does them because it must. The modern battle requires the technical appliances and since the enemy has them so do we. But no Marine boasts mastery of them.
Our pride is in our marksmanship, our discipline, and our membership in a fraternity of courage and sacrifice. "For the honor of the fallen, for the glory of the dead", Edgar Guest wrote of Belleau Wood . "The living line of courage kept the faith and moved ahead." They are all gone now, those Marines who made a French farmer's little Wheatfield into one of the most enduring of Marine Corps legends. Many of them did not survive the day and eight long decades have claimed the rest. But their actions are immortal. The Corps remembers them and honors what they did and so they live forever. Dan Daly's shouted challenge takes on its true meaning - if you lie in the trenches you may survive for now, but someday you may die and no one will care. If you charge the guns you may die in the next two minutes, but you will be one of the immortals.
All Marines die in either the red flash of battle or the white cold of the nursing home. In the vigor of youth or the infirmity of age all will eventually die, but the Marine Corps lives on. Every Marine who ever lived is living still, in the Marines who claim the title today.
It is that sense of belonging to something that will outlive our own mortality, which gives people a light to live by, and a flame to mark their passing.
Semper Fi to all the NT members who served in the Marines.
Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll. November 29th 1943.
Semper Fi Stands Tall (dad)...Tarawa, Sapian and Okinawa. Silver Star, Purple Heart with three oak leaf clusters.
All along the watchtower. Beirut, Lebanon 1983.
Semper Fi Bright Star (son) Purple Heart.
...American Hero.
With the Kavika clan, it's a multi-generational family trait.
Kavika's clan definitely knows how to keep that "Seventh Generation" moving and growing for our protection.
Thank you Kavika.
Semper Fi to all Marines, including 2 older brothers lost in VN and my youngest brother passed this year. RIP!
Semper Fi
Thank you Brother Kavika, my wise friend and brave warrior for all of us! Semper Fi to you as well! Sending you sincere bear hugs through the wires. 🤗🇺🇸
Wow, he looks like my nephew. Such noble beauty!
My boot camp photo.
What year Mr. Dashing young man?!
1987. And thanks 😀
Well you probably know by experience those dress blues are chick magnets!
And hotter'n'hell to wear
I imagine! No breathing room in the jackets up around the neck.
Did you see the Kevin Bacon movie, Taking Chance?
It moved me to tears, hitting home. Still does thinking about war torn and lost warriors every day, whether by accident, friendly fire or war action. Some family nearly every day finds the same grief we suffer.
I encourage everyone to participate in the Wounded Warriors campaign to help these brave souls recover from the devastating impacts of war.
What makes me so damn angry is the neglect of our homeless vets. This shouldn't ever be a reality on our streets of America. We need to do better, period. There are so many unused federal buildings that could be turned into shelters as a start.
Yea, was flirted with a time or two when I wore them. But they are damn uncomfortable.
Excellent movie...
Yea, very true. It was the one part of my dress blues that I never could get to fit right. Always too tight but that's the way it's supposed to be.
Sorry about the quality. I am taking pictures of pictures....with a cell phone.
In any case, this was at the Marine Corp Ball, 1989 when I was with 1st Recon Battalion. I am on the right in dress blues.
This guy was one of my best friends at Recon Battalion. At our annual PFT the week before this photo was taken, he ran 3 miles in 15:01. Guy could run like the wind. Me? Meh, I came in a couple minutes later, (17:10).
This was taken in the desert, in Iraq. Please take note of the extremely diverse landscape... At this point I was with 2/11, (artillery, we had 198mm guns), my year in Recon was up so I moved on.
Burning oil well that the republican guard set on fire as they retreated.
Rather poor picture, but, this was taken just off the coast of Bahrain, in the Persian Gulf. There was a Pizza Hut there...I am not making that up. After eating ship food for 7 months, a Pizza Hut was like winning the lottery for half a billion dollars. On my left side I had my gas mask. They were mandatory from the moment we entered the Persian Gulf.
''Always Faithful''
2nd and 3rd War Dog platoons. U.S. Marine Corps.
Dedicated to the 25 War Dogs that gave their lives fighting at the second battle of Guam. WWII
OOOOh - RRRaahhhhh - Semper Fi Marines.
Happy birthday Marines! Our family has representatives from every branch of the military. But there's something about a Marine that twirls my skirt up. Right over my head.
Happy Birthday!
Sunshine - is there any way you can enlarge the description of the uniform? Can't seem to be able to read much of it.
Get yer glasses.. LOL
They are powerful and stunning!
Excellent - and so damn true.
I still have mine stuffed in a closet somewhere. Pretty sure they wouldn't fit me now.
Got mine right after bootcamp. They were made of wool, not the new gaberdine stuff. We did a parade in Memphis, TN - wore the blues - got soaked in a rainstorm, and when they dried, the cuffs were knee high, the sleeves ended at the elbows and you didn't even want to put the neckband on.
Just never got a replacement set